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In Shakespeare’s King Lear, the distribution of power corrupts and abuses…

- - - - Lear discovers the plebeian underworld of the 'makeshift economy'
        
        "Prithee, go thyself. Seek thine own ease. This tempest will not give me ponder on things would hurt me more. But I'll go in. In, boy. Go first. You houseless poverty— Nay, get thee in. I'll pray, and then I'll sleep." (3.4. 23-27)
        
        "The art of our necessities is strange and can make vile things precious."(3.2.70-71)
        
        'Makeshift economy': temporary poor economy
  - - - Zero-sum economy: income limited to land ownership alone
- - - - Lear accepting Poor Tom and other less fortunate people's lives
        
        Poor Tom demonstrates the threat to noble power and authority
        
        "Who gives any thing to Poor Tom, whom the foul fiend hath led through fire and through flame, through ford and whirlipool, o'er bog and quagmire." (3.4.50-59)
        
        Connection
        
        Edgar loses all of his power to Edmund
      - Shakespeare universalizes the homelessness theme through showing vulnerability in any character in Lear
        
        Connection
- - - - Play repeatably protested against government initiatives (bastardy and strangering)
        
        Lear not only stops paternal care for Cordelia but further orders her "a stranger to my heart and me" (1.1.113, 115)
        
        Stripped by the plague of customs, Lear disowns Cordelia for speaking the truth to her father
        
        Connection
        
        "Let it be so. Thy truth then be thy dower. For by the sacred radiance of the sun, The mysteries of Hecate and the night, By all the operation of the orbs
        From whom we do exist and cease to be— Here I disclaim all my paternal care, Propinquity, and property of blood,
        And as a stranger to my heart and me Hold thee from this for ever. The barbarous Scythian, Or he that makes his generation messes To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom Be as well neighbored, pitied, and relieved As thou my sometime daughter." (1.1. 109-121)
        
        Edmund's feelings of the 'plague of customs'
        
        Edmund's soliloquy: “Thou, Nature, art my goddess ... Wherefore should I / Stand in the plague of custom ...?” (1.2.1-3)
        
        Plague of customs: Tortured by man made social customs that deprive an individual of their assumed rights